Evolution VS Creationism

[Blake_Foxx]

Stating that "I don't believe that X is true, because there is no evidence to support it, and I believe you are wrong in your claim that X is true because your evidence is faulty" should never be offensive, and if someone is offended, the problem is with them, not you.

Fair enough. I just try to avoid stirring up trouble. Some people are really touchy on this subject.

 

[Blake_Foxx]

The human brain differs from an animal brain in that there is literally a network of connections on the top which is responsible for the comparative thinking that we call intellect. Dogs don't have that. They do have emotions as you say. Emotions are part of the basic brain. So most animals have them. I don't care who denies it or how highly regarded they may be, all animals have feelings. But they don't have what I would call the augmentation of the human brain. It's like somebody deliberately added something extraterrestrial to the human brain, and perhaps to the dolphin brain as well. But I see very little hope of establishing an evolution path between dolphins and man. Unless you go with the extraterrestrial tampering theory, whereby you might suggest that the aliens tampered with the dolphins first, but eventually decided that an anthropoid would probably make better use of this biological enhancement.



I did say there was no problem with seeing man as part of the ape family. The question is, can any member of the ape family become furless and intellectual without some outside tampering. Even if we consider the one outside tampering to be nature, this suggests that nature has intelligence and purpose, making nature something that can and has been considered a god in many cultures.

No not really. The study with dogs I'm talking about was in specific reference to those neural pathways you're now referencing. Specifically the ones that guide emotion. Still the concept is very much the same that Dogs have a similar mechanism for thought as humans just on a slightly less grand scale. Though dogs have been proven capable of understanding English to some extent, and can even logic out new words. One test in particular they taught a dog a series of words for each of its toys. Then they placed in a completely unfamiliar toy into the lot. They asked the dog to get the new toy 'referencing it only by name with no other gestures of any sort' and the dog went back to the toy lot sifted through all of them and ultimately it found one toy it was unfamiliar with and wound up figuring out using logic that it must be what they wanted him to grab. Dogs are fascinating creatures, borderline sentient possibly even sentient. Also I don't think there is any need for Dolphins to share a link to humans they could easily have developed an intelligent mind on their own through natural selection and genetic mutation over time.

Yes, yes a member of the ape family, given enough time, could very well shed it's fur grow it's brain and basically become something very similar to humans. This of course would take an extraordinary amount of time, but is entirely conceivable within the framework of evolution. I doubt it'll happen, but it is certainly possible.

Oh and no one deliberately anything'd the human brain. If you really take a moment and examine a human being you can see if someone designed us they did a terrible job. We have an appendix for no apparent reason that just bursts on occasion killing you. Though with modern medicine this is treatable through surgery, but in the past it was a death sentence. We also have wisdom teeth which serve basically no purpose whatsoever and are painful. If someone designed us they really need to go back to school.

 

[Perri_Rhoades]

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[Rassah]

The human brain differs from an animal brain in that there is literally a network of connections on the top which is responsible for the comparative thinking that we call intellect.

Actually, all brains have the same basic structure. They're all just a network of neurons. Human brains just happen to have a vastly larger clump of that network than other species. That is pretty much the only thing that differentiates us from "dumb" animals.

Yes, I've heard this theory, and if you take it at face value it sounds solid. But if I try to put it through it's logical paces, it raises a lot of questions. For example, even if these mutations are random, they prove quite useful. They are generally something that the creature would have wished for. If they were truly random, everything in the animal kingdom would end up looking like a duck billed platypus. But even a duckbilled platypus has a use for everything its got.

The mutations are random, but evolution is absolutely not. Evolution is a change in species that best fits the changes in its environment. So, lots of mutations will simply screw up the offspring and kill it (birth defects). Others will kill it because it would make it less able to survive (a bald ape in a very cold climate for example). Once in a while, the mutation will give it benefits over others of the same species. For example, a mutation with a longer neck in an area with little grass and lots of trees will help it survive over it's siblings. Over time, both short necked and long necked animals will live together, but the long necked ones will eat all the food before sort necked ones get to it. Eventually, the short necked ones will starve and die off, and the loner necked ones will continue on. And we'll have giraffes. Sure, the initial genetic change to start this off was random, but the choice in which genes survive is not random at all.

So, if the mutations are random, we should see creatures that have evolved things which are totally useless to them. Let's say, just to be totally random, an equine that grows a 5th leg out of it's back. That wouldn't be any kind of hindrance to its survival. It would just look weird. But it would be totally useless.

There are a few vestigial evolutionary parts that used to be useful, but aren't any more. Like appendix, coccyx, goose bumps (which used to make us look all larger and poofy when we had fur, but don't do anything now), or even vestigial hind legs in whales (the bones are under the skin). As for examples of new evolutionary traits that don't do anything, I'm sure there are lots, but since they give no survival benefit, they would have to be minor, so as not to hinder survival, either. So they're things we don't really notice. Maybe earlobes? As I said, evolution is guided by the environment, so useless evolutions don't really give any benefit, and thus either just spread through the species, or die out, without having any impact.

In short, evolution is absolutely NOT totally random, and whoever told you that either didn't know what they were talking about, or was trying to deceive you.

 

[Hakar Kerarmor]

WHY IS THIS STILL BEING DEBATED

Because some/too many people are still too stupid to grasp even the simplest concepts of evolution.

 

[Mayfurr]

One rather vocal christian (I don't remember who it was, I think either Kent Hovind or Ray Comfort [...]

Erf. I would like to apologise on behalf of my country for Ray Comfort, especially for joining Kirk Cameron in claiming that the existence of bananas disproves evolution:

Now if you study a well-made banana, you'll find, on the far side, there are three ridges. On the close side, two ridges. If you get your hand ready to grip a banana, you'll find on the far side there are three grooves, on the close side, two grooves. The banana and the hand are perfectly made, one for the other. You'll find the maker of the banana, Almighty God, has made it with a non-slip surface. It has outward indicators of inward contents — green: too early; yellow: just right; black: too late. Now if you go to the top of the banana, you'll find, as with the soda can makers have placed a tab at the top, so God has placed a tab at the top. When you pull the tab, the contents don't squirt in your face. You'll find a wrapper which is biodegradable, has perforations. Notice how gracefully it sits over the human hand. Notice it has a point at the top for ease of entry. It's just the right shape for the human mouth. It's chewy, easy to digest and its even curved toward the face to make the whole process so much easier.

"... not only that, it's perfectly shaped for use as a sex toy." ;-)

The banana thing may be funny, but this is positively scary:

Therefore you should never take medicine to relieve pain. You should never consult a doctor or go to a hospital for treatment, because you would be interfering with the work of God in your life. If Cancer is the chastening tool of God, then doctors who are fighting cancer are fighting against the work of God.

 

[Perri_Rhoades]

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[Lobar]

Yes, I've heard this theory, and if you take it at face value it sounds solid. But if I try to put it through it's logical paces, it raises a lot of questions. For example, even if these mutations are random, they prove quite useful. They are generally something that the creature would have wished for. If they were truly random, everything in the animal kingdom would end up looking like a duck billed platypus. But even a duckbilled platypus has a use for everything its got.

So, if the mutations are random, we should see creatures that have evolved things which are totally useless to them. Let's say, just to be totally random, an equine that grows a 5th leg out of it's back. That wouldn't be any kind of hindrance to its survival. It would just look weird. But it would be totally useless.

Do we see evidence of animals evolving in ways that are totally useless. (I hear the cop out coming) "We assume they were there, but they just didn't survive long enough to enter the fossil record." Really? Consistently? Through the whole fossil record there is no evidence of creatures evolving something that was completely and utterly useless? Well then, minus an extreme leap of faith, you can't say evolution is random. It would seem to be specifically directed, either by the wishes of the creature to sprout wings so it can get up in that tree, or by some outside force thinking, "That species is not going to survive if I don't give it a means to get up in that tree."

Those are actually more logical assumptions to jump to than evolution is totally random. If evolution is totally random, there is no way that species is going to get up into the tree and survive. However, science has a new theory - probability. Maybe probability isn't as random as people think. The new theories of probability seem to dictate that if all the members of that species are simultaneously wishing for wings to get up in that tree, the odds are greatly increased that one of those would be birds will turn up with the genetic modification that will result in wings for everybody.

Of course, now we're getting into the theory that we create our own reality. Or, in religious terms, that we are our own God. This is why science is so much fun these days - the theories are now farther out there than religion. And just like with religion, I take all these theories with a grain of salt, particularly where evolution is concerned, because science outdated Darwin decades ago, but they've made such an icon of him that it's become un-PC to suggest that he could have been wrong about anything.

I think you're in need of an actual book on the subject, as there is a whole lot of wrong here.

Mutation is random. Evolution is not, as the process of natural selection culls non-beneficial traits from the population. Take fifty dice and roll them all on a table. Take the ten lowest dice and roll them again. Repeat through multiple "generations", and you will find that you're generating a very non-random population result through the process of selecting the randomly-generated individual results. "Usefulness" determines what is selected - random mutations happen, and if any happen to be useful and provide a greater chance of survival until reproduction, they tend to get passed on, while the rest do not.

A fifth leg growing out of something's back would be far from harmless. It would cost energy to grow and develop, complicate the birthing process, be prone to injury, and would likely impair other functions due to however it manages to articulate with the rest of the skeleton.

There's nothing at all to suggest that "wishing" to get in a tree is going to have any impact at all on anything.

Darwin isn't worshiped as infallible by scientists, either. There are a lot of finer details he got wrong (pangenesis, for example), though that is rather expected of a revolutionary discovery. The theory of evolution by natural selection as it exists today, however, is extremely well-supported by a mountain of evidence beyond any reasonable doubt.

 

[Perri_Rhoades]

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[CaptainCool]

Oh dear... Perrri, I highly recommend that you watch this video about the E. coli long-term evolution experiment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUhYGgtwNkE

It highlights how natural selection actually works. I highly recommend that you watch it because you really did make some pretty gross mistakes while talking about evolution.
What you explianed there is pretty much what creationists want you to believe what evolution is, because what you said there simply makes no sense at all.
For example, yes mutations are random. When UV light hits DNA the changes that occur are random. But mutations aren't the driving force of evolution! Natural selection is.
For example, imagine the ancestors of the modern giraffes. They had short necks. Now if there was a part of the population that had slightly longer necks and that gave them the advantage of being able to reach higher leaves then they had a higer chance to survive and with that a higher chance to pass on their genes to the next generation. Over millions of years this shifts the population away from short necks and the average neck length increases. And at that point you then have two different species. This process is called speciation.
Lenski's experiment highlights all of these things which is why it's such a great example as solid proof for evolution.

 

[Blake_Foxx]

The appendix was probably very useful back in the time when man was a herbivore. Should we ever revert in the future, it may become useful again.

Actually, I rather like the idea that the Earth was once a sandbox (Second Life terminology) for a school of students studying an advanced genetic science, and that all life on Earth evolved from their failed experiments. Maybe some poor student got a failing grade for man because he forgot to take the appendix out.

I'm rather sure it did serve a purpose at one point. This was quite a long time ago, and these days it doesn't serve any purpose. In fact it's a hindrance if anything. I doubt humans will go back to herbivore days given that we seem to be fairing extraordinarily well with our omnivore diet. My point still remains in that there are plenty of things in evolution which are completely non-beneficial. Some things even to the point of being down right harmful. I'm fairly certain a lot of different species have traits that are just there and serve no purpose.

It's an interesting concept, but I don't believe some extra-terrestrial or superior beings were playing 'science fair' when earth was created. The best answer so far to the development of life seem to be evolution. I can't speak to the origin of the first living organism on earth, but I hear there are quite a few interesting theories on it.

 

[Fallowfox]

Lots of stuff.

To address every single fallacy in this comment.

-There have been many human species in the past. We appear unique today because all our relatives are extinct, just like the platypus appears special because many of its close relatives have now died. The evolution of various human species is recorded in the fossil record and matches allopatric and allometric theories of morphological change. [species change when they are divided into new gene pools, species often change by taking paedomorphic forms]. The human face is a paedomorph of a typical ape face, for example.

-Quantum definitions of information are different to biological metaphors of information in the DNA code. DNA is a molecule that probably took a long long time to evolve, and there are other forms of genetic information which are more primitive that still survive, like RNA. Life uses a digital code because digital codes have a higher fidelity, which means they are easier to reproduce and therefore confer a survival advantage. If you think there is a deeper reason you are reading too much into the word 'digital'.

-DNA codes, unfortunately, do not 'calculate' their next move when they evolve. Evolution of genetic material is, in the orthodox view, blind. 'The selfish Gene' explains this mechanism in a digestible and frank format. If DNA 'planned' its evolution we would not expect to see harmful vestiges, as has already been elucidated in this thread.

-Your 'an idea hits a black hole' argument is poorly worded in broken logic and has absolutely nothing to do with the question 'does evolution require guidance from extraterrestrials'?

-There is no source of intelligence that calculates DNA expression and there is no 'evolution in order to better the species'. Survival of the fittest.

-There is no 'unified field of creative ideas'. This is woo-woo magic la la talk.


You are failing to understand what words like 'information' mean and then extrapolating arguments based on these mistakes to the point of absurdity. :\
Also please do not mistake 'confer a survival advantage' for 'life decided it would evolve like this, because it's better'. Using the digital dna example, we can imagine that life may have originally been analogue [although since chemistry lends itself to being digital and discreet this is a silly idea, but I'll press on]. Our hypothetical analogue life forms cannot reproduce as accurately as life forms that exploit digital storage, therefore the analogue life forms become a smaller and smaller percentage of the gene pool until they die out, and no conscious entity is ever implied by this process.

 

[CaptainCool]

^What that guy said
As I said above, qhat you said is dangerously close to what hardcore creationists/ID supporters want you to believe about evolution. You are essentially using ALL of their deranged arguments, like "DNA being a language and languages need a creator" and so on.

Evolution is an entirely blind process. Nothing works through planning, it's just "better" genes that have a higher chance to be passed on to the next generation and nothing else. That is the most important thing to understand about evolution, it is a natural process that doesn't require guidance or a creator because in essence it is nothing but the logical consequence of variations in the gene pool. Good genes are passed on, bad stuff stays behind and dies.

 

[Perri_Rhoades]

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[Ozriel]

In essence, "intelligent Design" is basically the result of a modern myth concept; that humans still rely on mythos to explain how the universe was created. I am sure that if the majority were worshiping Greek or Egyptian gods, we'd still be arguing the same concept on how the universe was created and how life came to be. Instead of just a God, you'd have an explanation to how a group of gods created the universe.

The problem with it is that people are trying to take the bible into literal context by using religious philosophy to state it as fact. The bible in itself is allegory.

Also "Scientific Theory" is not the same as just the plain ol' word "Theory". The difference between the former and the latter is that the former is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on knowledge that has been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation. The latter is more of "guessing". Scientific theories are always changing based on our technology and how much we delve further into the subject under experimentation and further observation.

 

[Perri_Rhoades]

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[Perri_Rhoades]

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[Blake_Foxx]

The best answer anyone can give is that they don't believe anything. Theories are always fun to speculate about. But to believe in one is to close the mind. Once you say you believe something, somebody's got you, and your thoughts are no longer free.

So, yeah, I don't believe in the extra-terrestrials either. Actually, I don't believe any of the theories I've mentioned in this thread. I'm just aware of them, and I think they're fun to kick around. But I'm not going to tell anybody that I have anything to offer that they should believe. I just have lots of fun things for them to think about, because thinking is a healthy thing to do. Believing is not.

Well the extra-terrestrial super being suggestion is more a hypothesis than a theory. If it were a theory I'd be inclined to take it to at least some extent more seriously, depending on the nature of why it's referenced as 'theory'. Also the whole thing is an unfalsifiable hypothesis so I can't really disprove that aliens created life, but I can easily point out that it fails to meet any standards of proof, and has no evidence to support it.

Oh and about your Giraffe thing you said in a previous post.

I'm pretty sure what happened there is that one species neck stretched just a bit and thus it survived a little better than the others of it's kind. This allowed it to pass on its genes. Sometime later I'm almost sure it didn't happen immediately the new species with a slightly stretched neck again experienced a slight neck stretch making it just a little bit better able to survive. Repeat this process over and over an extraordinary time span and BAM! giraffe. There's nothing unimaginable about it really. It's just plain and simple little changes stacking up over time.

 

[CaptainCool]

Perri, I won't quote you so I won't overstretch the page. Instead I just go through everything you said:

-Why would it make a difference whether he was talking about E. Coli or insects or mammals? No matter which critter you look at, evolution always happens the same way. Bacteria are just nice to work with and they give you more new generations than any other kind of critter. You can also freeze them without killing them for future reference. That makes them ideal for this experiment.

-Mutations don't matter. Sunlight don't matter because mutations can happen without the influence of UV light through errors during the replication of DNA.
Mutations CAN be a factor in evolution. It can cause "fast evolution", but in this case "fast" means 1 million years instead of 10 million years. So still pretty damn slow.

-They are NOT preprogrammed! Or can you factually PROVE that they are? As the video said, they got the ability to use a new food source through three seperate genetic variations. That happened twice throughout all these lines of generations. If your assumption that they are preprogrammed to use citrate would be true THEY ALL should be able to use it and NOT just two lines! That is because all 12 lineages of E. Coli originate from the same batch. They were genetically identical at first so they all shoúld have the same pre-programming. So your assumption falls flat on it's face right there, that is direct evidence that evolution has nothing to do with pre-programming.

-You are not a skeptic. A skeptic doesn't come up with his own assumptions about how things work. A skeptic looks at the evidence and goes from there.

-Evolution is STILL not a "method". It is a blind. Process.

-You did not understand my example about the giraffes... I didn't say that they went straight to long necks. I said that it happened over time through multiple generations over millions of years through genetic variations. I never even TOUCHED the word "mutation" during that example! So can you PLEASE just forget about he word "mutation"? No biologist who wants to be taken seriously would EVER regularly use that word when it comes to evolution...

-About mutations: High energy photos ramming into your DNA at random is a guided process? I don't think so.

-It doesn't boggle my mind and it could make sense. HOWEVER! There is no evidence for that and it hasn't been observed in nature. What you can observe is females picking high performance males with advantageous traits and that results in better offspring.

 

[Lobar]

Interesting video, if hard to follow due to the smart assed dialogue. But, you know, I didn't need anybody to go to all that trouble to convince me that germs evolve, or that they adapt to whatever food source is available. Bacteria have been known to evolve to eating nylon. That's why I started out by saying evolution exists. It's quite observable. Nobody's denying that. But, a citrus eating E. coli is still an E. coli. I was waiting through the whole video for it to turn into a fruit fly or a mosquito or something - anything but an E. coli. That would be news. That would provide support for some of the unsupported notions of evolution. But, alas, much ado about nothing.

Likewise, nobody is disputing that DNA evolves. But the question of how the DNA evolved is not addressed. It's further complicated by my assumption that this experiment took place in a laboratory where there was no direct sunlight to cause a mutation. If that is correct, it throws the whole theory of mutation into question.

Another thing is the use of E. coli for the experiment, as E. coli already have active DNA running a program, which very likely already has pre-programed ways they can evolve, triggered by what food sources are available. The evidence of both this experiment and the nylon eating bacteria suggests such simple life forms are pre-programmed to adapt to whatever food source is available. Which would be some incredible programming.

Now, I don't mean to deceive you into thinking I'm a creationist. Actually I don't personally take any side in this debate. I'm not a scientist, or a prophet, so I can't go out and prove any of these things I'm being told for myself. I have to take somebody's word that they actually did the scientific experiment and reported the results faithfully. Likewise, on the other end of the spectrum, I have to take somebody's word that they actually had the spiritual experience they are claiming, and that it was not being influenced by drugs, brainwashing or just wishful thinking.

I guess you could say that one thing I absolutely am is a true skeptic. I take nothing at face value, I trust no one with my faith, and I make sure to keep plenty of grains of salt handy as I cruise the internet, putting everything I'm told to the one test I am capable of giving it, which is the logic test. To pass the logic test, there can be no loose ends, no leaps of faith. Everything which is to be believed must make 100%, unbroken and uncompromised sense.

Evolution, as a method by which creatures adapt to their living conditions makes 100% sense. Evolution as an explanation for the origin of the universe makes 100% non-sense. The leaps of faith one has to take to get to that conclusion are ridiculous. Therefore, as someone pointed out above, the debate itself is ridiculous.

The Book Of Genesis, taken literally as it is in the debate video, is ridiculous non-sense. But, The Book Of Genesis, read allegorically up to a certain point is 100% in agreement with science. But to get to that agreement, you have to read every passage with the same test. You have to constantly ask "How can I read this so that it makes sense?" But people don't do that. They depend on other people to tell them how they should read it, and that is how they come up with ridiculous conclusions like the world is only 6000 years old.

Science can do the same thing. They don't just show you the data. Whoever you learn these things from assumes you're too dumb to read the data, probably because they too dumb to read the data themselves. So they are handed down the standard interpretation, and they spread it around for all the Atheists and other science minded folks to take on faith without question or logic test. And that is how the other side comes up with natural selection explains everything you need to know about how evolution works. But you can not get there without extreme leaps of faith. I've tried.

Logically, you need to do a lot more than mess around with E. coli to make the loose ends connect. Take this giraffe analogy that I've heard here a couple of times. Yeah, the food's up in the air, and the original giraffe doesn't have a long neck, but the new ones do. So they'll survive. But you still have not provided a logic bridge for why there is a long necked giraffe there in the first place. And, no, random mutations will not cover that gap. That is not a random mutation. That is a mutation specifically tailored to that environment. Natural selection isn't going to do it either, because there are not a hundred misfired mutation results in this analogy. There is one mutation in one animal who has extremely limited odds of reaching mating age.

Unless we adjust the analogy to say there are numerous identical mutations taking place in several short necked giraffes, which opens up a whole new can of worms, and is actually supported by the E. coli experiment. I think one of the things the E. coli experiment proves is synchronicity in DNA, pre-programmed changes that take place across an entire species when triggered by a specific influence - in the giraffe's case, the position of the food. But you still have the problem of explaining how the DNA knows to trigger that specific response to the situation. In fact, you have the problem of explaining how the DNA of an entire species can work in concert to fix the situation. And you have to realize that you don't have millions of years to make this happen. This happens within one or two generations, or the giraffes are just dead.

Yes, you can logically say that certain rays from the sun trigger the mutation process. I can't prove that, but at least it's not logically unsupported. But once that process is started, something directs it. The evidence is right there staring you in the face that something directs it, and you're dismissing that evidence due to your faith in the scientific consensus. Which is exactly what the religious people do.

It boggles my mind how no one sees how easily this logic gap could be bridged simply by the suggestion that the animal, through the power of its own longing to reach the food, could influence the mutating DNA of its offspring, resulting in a longer neck. I said before that DNA requires a mechanism to calculate the changes. Is it possible that every living thing that has DNA also contains some kind of biological calculator that produces sequences of data for desired changes? Is that impossible? Has science ever even thought to test it? Have they avoided testing it simply because it would conflict with other theories they don't want to admit they could be wrong about?

We'll never know, at least not in our lifetime, because our lifetime is going to be wasted on this silly, impractical and useless debate, which no one is ever going to win until people stop taking someone else's word for everything and start thinking for themselves.

Let me be frank here: your understanding of the material at this point is below high school level. There's actually nothing stopping you from visiting the academic journal section of your local library and reading the data from the primary source, but its implications would be beyond your grasp given the fundamental errors you keep repeating here.

The Lenski experiment took place in a single laboratory over the course of 40 years. That's an area about 1 billionth of the total surface area on Earth, in a time period about 1 hundred millionth that of the history of life itself, which is the scale at which evolution has taken place to arrive at the diversity of life today. It is not at all expected that on such a small scale, that any multicellular organism would evolve from prokaryotic bacteria, much less something that is already an extant eukaryotic animal species. Such a discovery would actually challenge pretty much everything we know about biology. Evolution is a slow process.

You continue to conflate natural selection with directed mutation. DNA does not "know" anything to willfully "trigger a specific response" (nor is direct sunlight required, errors in replication can and will happen on their own without external stimulus). Again, mutation is random, a mere ticket in a genetic lottery. Once in a great while, something "wins" by hitting upon a beneficial mutation (this is why evolution is so slow). An entire generation doesn't then have to hit upon that same mutation all at once. Once there's a single organism with a mutation that gives it a slight edge at successfully reproducing over the rest of the population, that gene will slowly but surely increase its distribution throughout the population over successive generations. It's the Law of Large Numbers in action, akin to the way that even though a casino may only hold a slight house edge over the players, play long enough and it's a certainty that they will end up with all of your money.

The only "mechanism" by which DNA "calculates" changes in a population is through trial and error, with a lot of error.

 

[Aleu]

On the word "mutation"

isn't there technically genetic mutations such as eye color or something of that nature? Or is that outdated/incorrect information?

 

[Lobar]

On the word "mutation"

isn't there technically genetic mutations such as eye color or something of that nature? Or is that outdated/incorrect information?

A mutation is any actual change in a gene, resulting in a new allele. I'm not sure where CC got the idea that the word "mutation" isn't used (maybe the language barrier at play here), because it does have a scientific meaning and is how completely new genetic material actually comes about.

 

[CaptainCool]

On the word "mutation"

isn't there technically genetic mutations such as eye color or something of that nature? Or is that outdated/incorrect information?

Mutations usually only happen in individuals and range from absolutely awful, to neutral (no benefit or disadvantage) to beneficial.
Eye color would be neutral, the inability to burn body fat on your own would be awful, being able to use a new source of food would be very beneficial.
Neutral and awful mutations usually get weeded out, beneficial mutations are passed on the the law of large numbers.

A mutation is any actual change in a gene, resulting in a new allele. I'm not sure where CC got the idea that the word "mutation" isn't used (maybe the language barrier at play here), because it does have a scientific meaning and is how completely new genetic material actually comes about.

No language barrier, I just biffed it and you are right :V Or you give me the benefit of he doubt and we just agree that I woreded it wrong ;D
What I meant is that mutations are not the main driving force behind evolution, genetic variations are. Mutations just have the ability to completely mix things up through radically different genetic material.

 

[Rassah]

Erf. I would like to apologise on behalf of my country for Ray Comfort, especially for joining Kirk Cameron in claiming that the existence of bananas disproves evolution:

Hillarious irony: bananas are inedible in nature, and only exist in current yellow sweet form thanks to human guided evolution.

Evolution, as a method by which creatures adapt to their living conditions makes 100% sense. Evolution as an explanation for the origin of the universe makes 100% non-sense.

Oh dear... Evolution has absoluteely nothing to to with the origin of the universe. It only descries how things came to be after life already formed. The actual forming of life is abiogenesis, and the forming of the universe is big bang. Not evolution. I'll explain the later down below

The Book Of Genesis, taken literally as it is in the debate video, is ridiculous non-sense. But, The Book Of Genesis, read allegorically up to a certain point is 100% in agreement with science.

Except the Book of Genesis talks about firmaments in the sky, creating of light before the sun and moon, and creating the sun before the stars, all of which we know to be absolutely wrong. Genesis wasn't even remotely right about how things came to be.

Science can do the same thing. They don't just show you the data. Whoever you learn these things from assumes you're too dumb to read the data, probably because they too dumb to read the data themselves.
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But you can not get there without extreme leaps of faith. I've tried.

I don't know if you are too dumb to understand the data, but it's fairly easy to just ask a scientist to explain it to you. When you learn about stuff, you're not supposed to take leaps of faith. Instead, just assume "I don't know," and ask until you understand it. That's all. Thinking that Genesis confirms anything in any way IS taking a leap of faith, the first one being a presupposition about how you believe things work, and then trying to fit any new data into your presupposition.

It boggles my mind how no one sees how easily this logic gap could be bridged simply by the suggestion that the animal, through the power of its own longing to reach the food, could influence the mutating DNA of its offspring, resulting in a longer neck.

But there is no evidence for this, either. Yes, it has been "tested" in the sense that we understand very well what DNA is, and how it works, and it just doesn't work that way. There is simply no method of communication to tell DNA what to do based on outside environment.

And by the way, the other things that are just scientific "theories" and not "facts" are:
Theory of Gravity (Do you believe in gravity, even though it's just a theory?)
Germ theory of Disease (Do you believe we get sick from bacteria and viruses, even though it's just a theory?)
Theory of Electricity (do you believe electricity exists?)

What throws people off with the scientific word "theory" is that it's not a colloquial word about what some believe may or may not exist or be true ("My theory is that this is so and so). Theory is a word that is used with something we already know to be absolutely true, and is a word that means to describe the process by which that true thing operates. We know gravity, germs, and electricity exist. The theory in their case is only by which process they work exactly. Likewise, we know evolution exists, and the theory is only about how the evolutionary process works. So evolutionis not even in dispute. Just some of the fringe parts of its processes are.

As for the origin of the universe, that has nothing at all to do with evolution, and was actually recently proven with the help of the Large Hadron colider. The common question is, "How can something come from nothing?" Out in the universe, we see equal parts of matter and antimatter (see, as in watch how things move around each other with gravity influencing it). Matter and antimatter are exact opposites, and if brought together, would cancel each other out. Likewise, if we were to bring the entirety of the universe together and sum it all up, we would have lots of positives plus lots of negatives, all add up to zero. So, the answer to the question is actually that we do have a sum total of nothing out of nothing. We just happen to be on one side of that nothing. Then, the follow-up question would be, "but what caused all this matter and anti-matter to form?" The guess used to be "it just happened spontaneously. Quantum mechanics, random occurance, or it just happened." That specific theory was confirmed during the Large Hadron experiment, when we saw a whole bunch of these mini-big bang quantum events happening, with random little pops of matter and anti-matter happening all over, completely at random, and completely spontaneously. None of them resulted in a big bang, since they were small, and forming within an already existing universe, which made them quickly fizzle out, but nevertheless, the theory is confirmed: the universe is a whole lot of nothing, that popped into existance all on it's own, because that's just how physics apparently work.

 

[Aleu]

No language barrier, I just biffed it and you are right :V Or you give me the benefit of he doubt and we just agree that I woreded it wrong ;D
What I meant is that mutations are not the main driving force behind evolution, genetic variations are. Mutations just have the ability to completely mix things up through radically different genetic material.

I figured it was worded wrong after rereading it.

So...does this mean I won't get super regenerative powers or epic shape-shifting abilities? ;~;